Society & Culture

In The Secret War Against Hate, Steven J. Ross details the racist, anti-Semitic groups that sprang up in the latter half of the 20th century — and the spy network that worked to bring them to justice.

The Trump era has brought a resurgence of the "alpha male." New Yorker writer Charles Bethea reports on camps where men crawl through mud and sit in ice baths in an effort to reclaim masculinity.

Bryan Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative and the founder of the Legacy Sites. He wrote the introduction to a new companion book called "The Legacy Sites: A History Of Racial Injustice."

Americans are betting on sports, elections, award shows and even military actions. The Atlantic writer McKay Coppins bet $10k from his employer in his investigation of this gambling world.

As a culture critic, Lemieux has spent years pushing back against the stereotypes and stigma that follow single mothers. Her new book blends her own memoir with the stories of 21 other Black women.

My guest is the author Rhae Lynn Barnes. In the late 1800s, as professional minstrel shows were becoming obsolete, amateur blackface shows became one of the most popular forms of entertainment, and that's where Barnes' focus is. The new book "Darkology" uncovers the hidden history of blackface.

Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard, has had a long and interesting career, which only seems to get more interesting with age. Now in his 70s, he's just earned a Golden Globe award and an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor for his performance in the widely acclaimed film "Sentimental Value," from the Danish Norwegian director Joachim Trier.

novelist Tayari Jones. She wrote her first novel more than two decades ago, but it was her fourth, "An American Marriage," that put her into the national spotlight. When it came out in 2018, Oprah chose it for her book club, and Barack Obama put it on his reading list. It went on to win the Women's Prize for Fiction and has been published in more than a dozen countries, praised as a compassionate portrait of love and justice.

Dorothy Roberts is a professor of law and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and a 2024 MacArthur fellow. Her new memoir is called "The Mixed Marriage Project: A Memoir Of Love, Race, And Family."

In Fear and Fury, historian Heather Ann Thompson revisits Bernhard Goetz's shooting of four Black teens — and explains how the incident reshaped criminal justice, national policy and media coverage.

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Quiara Alegria Hudes, writer of "In The Heights," "Water By The Spoonful" and the memoir "My Broken Language." She recently published her first novel, "The White Hot"

Heather McGhee, author of 2021's The Sum of Us, discusses the economic cost of racism, the importance of community organizing and the "zero-sum lie" that progress for some means loss for others.

Critic-at-large John Powers gives his due to the movies, TV and books he wasn't able to cover earlier in the year, including La Grazia, Andor, Mississippi Blue 42 and the documentary Mr. Scorsese.

Arnett co-wrote his new film, in which he plays a man going through a divorce who finds himself onstage doing stand-up. He also has an extensive voiceover career, and co-hosts the SmartLess podcast.

Patrick Markee spent two decades walking through New York City's tunnels, armories and intake centers. His book asks: what if homelessness isn't a personal failing, but the result of policy choices?

The mother daughter duo have always shared a profession. But when Ladd was diagnosed with lung disease, the two started sharing so much more. Ladd died Nov. 3. Originally broadcast June 26, 2023.

In 2015, Copeland made history as the first Black woman to become a principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre. Copeland took her final bow with American Ballet Theatre in October, after spending years away from performance.

Yousafzai chronicled her childhood in the 2013 memoir, I Am Malala. In the new memoir, Finding My Way, she writes about her life at Oxford and beyond. It's the story of a college student who, like many others before her, tries marijuana, fails exams and falls in love for the first time. But it also reveals Yousafzai's efforts to deal with the trauma of the attack she had survived years earlier.

Alysia Abbott was raised by a single father at the dawn of the gay liberation era. Sofia Coppola recently adapted Abbott's memoir, Fairyland, to film. Originally broadcast in 2013.

Julian's new book, We Survived the Night, is part memoir, part indigenous history and part "coyote stories. For Julian, telling his story in the memoir and film is part of a broader mission: "As a Native person who's living in the wake of a cultural genocide that nearly wiped our way of life ... off the face of this Earth, how you choose to live your life becomes a somewhat existential question," he says.